HP Labs Claims Sensor Breakthrough

HP officials said the new sensor technology will not only enable the development of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometers that are up to 1,000 times more sensitive than existing wireless sensors, but also more efficient to deploy because they are less expensive than most existing sensors and consume less power.

The advent of more sophisticated sensor technology is at the root of major advances in how IT will be deployed. By being able to collect more data efficiently, the number of processes that can be measured in minute detail expands extensively. That data will then need to be fed back to analytic applications that are also growing in terms of their ability to process large amounts of data.

Sensors, for example, can be deployed to measure the stress on a bridge, which in the case of the Bay Bridge might have averted a closure of a major thoroughfare that links San Francisco to Oakland.
The new HP sensor technology is especially attuned to track acceleration, which has implications for a range of supply chain and automotive applications.

HP plans to deploy the new sensors as part of the Central Nervous System for the Earth (CeNSE) project, which involves HP deploying over a trillion nanoscale sensors and actuators embedded in an array of networks and computing systems to track changes in the environment.